On this day, 65 years ago in the glorious city of Memphis by God Tennessee, Richard Morgan Fliehr was born and along with him the future of professional wrestling. At the age of 23, he’d adopt the moniker that would stick with him for life as one of the most charismatic and beloved (or loathed) wrestling personalities, and Ric Flair would go on to become a household name for his trademark “WOO!” and that strut that the majority of blue-blooded American men have imitated at least once in their lives.

In lieu of a long-winded tribute to Flair, because nobody needs to remind us of how awesome Flair has always been at cutting a promo or putting on a show in the ring, I’m just going to post these two hour-long video montages of Flair’s promos from 1985 and 1986. How these videos barely have more than 110,000 views combined is beyond me, as I think I’m responsible for half of them, and if I weren’t so certain that the WWE and other companies might want to delete them from YouTube, I’d demand a full-scale investigation. But since I think we should all watch these videos and appreciate a great wrestling personality, I’ll hold off on the witch hunt for now.

I don’t have time to watch those videos; but I know that one of my favorite lines from a Flair promo in this era is when he tells a fan something like ‘my shoes are worth more than your house.’ Great stuff.

It was 1988, or maybe 1987. Didn’t know it at the time, but it was the dying days of the NWA. Of course they were huge in Charlotte and thereabouts, but they had no presence in much of the country, and with the WWF devouring the other old territories, they were in trouble. So in a last ditch effort to compete, NWA tried to go national. This initiative included a single show in the Twin Cities at the old Metropolitan Sports Center (where the Mall of America now stands).

Once our part of the world got cable TV, my wrestling bros and I quickly gravitated to NWA over the often cartoonish WWF. We were geeked when they had a show here, but with Vince pulling Hogan, Okerlund and even the Midnight Rockers (with Shawn Michaels) out of Verne Gagne’s AWA, this area pretty quickly became WWE terrority. We wondered whether the NWA could draw here. Well, they couldn’t.

I recall about 2,000 showing up at Met Center. That estimate may be high. The place was desolate. I recall in most of the matches, the wrestlers went through the motions — most notably with Dusty Rhodes vs. Big Bubba (Ray Traylor/Big Boss Man) in a cage. Dusty just tossed Bubba into the fence a couple of times and that was it. (In retrospect, knowing now that Dusty had a big piece of the company, I can forgive him now for his lack of professionalism. For all I know he lost his house that night.)

Anyway, the Flair main event was against Nikita Koloff following his face turn. Nikita would no-sell a suplex (which at least to me seemed revolutionary at the time) and it was glorious. But it was classic Flair. He performed just as you imagine he would, with the styling and profiling, the flips over the turnbuckle, the self-styled face plants. Didn’t matter that the place was mostly empty.

Whatever else can be said about Flair, in or outside of the ring, he has earned his unique place in (hell, I’ll say it) this business. Because whether it was 15,000 or 1,500, he gave you everything he had. Happy birthday, you drunk old lunatic…